Pentecost Alley Read online

  It was too dark to see the color of Jago’s face, but the sudden jerk of his head, the haggard look in his eyes and mouth betrayed the emotion which tore at him.

  The silence was unbroken, heavy, like the gathering darkness. What horror was filling Jago’s mind? The death of a woman he knew made suddenly more vivid? Fear for his erstwhile friend’s peril, his embarrassment? Or guilt, because perhaps he had done as Thirlstone had suggested, and accidentally picked up Finlay’s badge instead of his own and left it at the scene of the crime?

  “You don’t protest his innocence, Mr. Jones,” Pitt said very quietly. “Does that mean you are not surprised?”

  “It … it doesn’t …” Jago swallowed. “It doesn’t mean anything, Mr. Pitt, except that I was grieved. I don’t believe Finlay guilty, but I can’t offer any explanation that would be of value to you, and certainly not any you won’t already have thought of yourself.” He shifted his weight a little. “Perhaps Finlay was there at some other time and dropped the badge, although I’m surprised he still wore it, very surprised indeed! Perhaps he even gave it to Ada in … in payment? The fact that she had it does not necessarily mean she obtained it that night.”

  “You are struggling to be loyal to a friend, Mr. Jones,” Pitt replied wearily. “Which I respect, but I do not agree. Of course I shall pursue every piece of evidence, and every meaning it could have. If you should think of anything more about Ada McKinley, or anything that happened last night, please let me know. Leave a message at the Bow Street Station.”

  “Bow Street?” Jago’s dark eyebrows rose. “Not Whitechapel?”

  “I work from Bow Street. Superintendent Pitt.”

  “A Bow Street superintendent. Why are you concerned with the murder of a Whitechapel prostitute?” His voice dropped and there was a ripple of fear in it. “Do you fear we have another Ripper?”

  Pitt shivered, cold in the center of his stomach.

  “No. I was called in because of the evidence implicating Mr. FitzJames.”

  “It’s too slender …” Jago swallowed hard again, his eyes on Pitt’s face, almost pleading.

  “A man answering his description was seen, by two witnesses, at exactly the right time, and with Ada.”

  Jago looked as if Pitt had struck him.

  “Oh, God!” he sighed—a prayer, not a blasphemy.

  “Reverend Jones, do you know something which you should tell me?”

  “No.” The word came from a dry throat, stiff lips.

  Pitt wanted to believe him, and could not. The honesty which had been between them had vanished like the yellow in the sky over the rooftops. The lamplighter had passed unnoticed. The gaslit moons made bright intervals along the way back towards the Whitechapel Road and the route home.

  “Can I help you with the cart?” Pitt said practically.

  “No … thank you. I’m used to it, and it isn’t heavy,” Jago refused, moving at last and bending to pick up the handles.

  They walked side by side up Coke Street and turned the corner towards St. Mary’s. Neither of them spoke again until they reached it and parted, then it was a simple farewell.

  Pitt arrived home in Bloomsbury tired and unusually depressed. He ate the dinner which Charlotte had kept for him, then afterwards sat in the parlor with the French doors to the garden ajar, the warmth of the day fading rapidly and the smell of cut grass filling the air.

  Charlotte sat under the lamp sewing. She had asked him about the case which had taken him out so early and kept him so late. He had told her only that it was a murder in Whitechapel and that the evidence implicated someone of importance and therefore was politically explosive.

  He sat watching her now, the light on her hair, which was clean and bright, coiled on her head, shining like mahogany in the highlights, almost black in the shadows. Her skin was smooth, a faint blush in her cheek. She looked comfortable. Her gown was old rose, and became her as much as anything she owned. Her fingers worked, stitching and pulling, threading back into the cloth again, the needle catching silver as it moved. They were only a few miles from Whitechapel as the sparrow flew, yet it was a world so distant it was beyond imagination. Charlotte’s world was safe, clean, its values secure; honesty was easy, and chastity hardly a challenge. She was loved, and she could surely never have doubted it. She had no compromises to make, no judgments of value against survival, no weariness of soul, endless doubt and fear and self-disgust.

  No wonder she smiled as she sat! What would Jago Jones think of her? Would he find her unendurably self-satisfied—unforgivably comfortable in her ignorance?

  Charlotte pulled the needle in and out, watching because she could not work otherwise. She wanted to have something to do with her hands. It was easier. The day had been long. She had woken when Pitt did, and not really gone back to sleep again.

  Her sister, Emily, had called in the middle of the morning. She had said little of any importance, but there was a restlessness in her which was uncharacteristic. It was not one of unused energy but rather of seeking something she could not find, or perhaps even name. She was critical, and had taken offense at several remarks which were not meant unkindly. That was unlike her.

  Charlotte had wondered if it was the difficulty of having their grandmother resident in the house since their mother had remarried. Grandmama had refused to stay under the same roof with Caroline’s new husband. He was an actor, and several years Caroline’s junior. The fact that they were extremely happy only added to the offense.

  But Emily’s dissatisfaction was not particular, and she left without explaining herself.

  Now Pitt was sitting brooding silently, his brow furrowed, his mouth pulled down. She knew it was the case which troubled him. His silence had a particular quality she had grown used to over the years. He was sitting crookedly in his chair, one leg crossed over the other. When he was relaxed he put his feet on the fender, whatever the time of the year, and whether the fire was lit or not. On a summer evening like this, were he not absorbed in his thoughts, he would have walked to the end of the lawn, under the apple tree, and stood there breathing in the quiet, scented air. He would have expected her to go with him. If they had talked at all, it would have been of trivia.

  Several times she had considered asking him about it, but his expression was closed in, and he had offered nothing. He did not want to speak of it. Perhaps he did not want its ugliness or its threat to intrude into their home. This was the one place where he could be free of it. Or if not totally free, then at least if it were mentioned at all, it would be of his own choosing, and not hers.

  She knew he had been to Whitechapel, and she knew what it was like. He could not have forgotten the numerous times when she had seen slum tenements, smelled the stinking gutters, the dark, narrow houses with their generations of filth seeped into the walls, the tired, hungry and anxious people.

  But in order to help, one had to keep one’s own strength. Agonizing for people accomplished nothing useful. To help the masses one needed laws, and change of heart in those with power. To affect an individual one needed knowledge, and perhaps money, or some appropriate skill. Above all one needed nerve and judgment, one needed all one’s own emotional strength.

  So she sat quietly and sewed, waiting until Pitt was ready to share with her whatever it was that bothered him, or to deal with it by at least temporarily forgetting and allowing himself to restore his spirit with what was good.

  3

  EMILY RADLEY, Charlotte’s sister, about whom she had been concerned, was indeed dispirited. It was not a specific problem. She had everything she considered necessary to be happy. Indeed, she had more. Her husband was charming, handsome, and treated her with affection. She was unaware of any serious fault in him.

  When they had met he had been well-born, living largely on his value as a lively, delightful companion and guest, his exquisite manners and his ready wit. Emily had been fully aware of the risks entailed in falling in love with him. He might prove shallow, spendthrift, e
ven boring after the first novelty had passed. She had done it just the same. She had spent many hours telling herself how foolish she was, and that there was even a high possibility he sought her primarily for the fortune she had inherited from her first husband, the late Lord Ashworth.

  She smiled as she thought of George. Memory was very powerful, a strange mixture of sadness, loss, sweetness for the times that had been good, and a deliberate passing over of those which had not.

  All her fears had proved groundless. Far from being shallow, Jack had developed a social conscience and a considerable ambition to effect changes in society. He had campaigned for a seat in Parliament, and after his first defeat had returned to battle, and at the second attempt had won. Now he spent a considerable amount of his time, and his emotions, in political endeavor.

  It was Emily herself who seemed a little trivial, a little spendthrift.

  Edward, her son and George’s heir, was in the schoolroom with his tutor, and baby Evangeline was upstairs in the nursery, where the maid was caring for her, seeing to the laundry, the feeding, the changing. Emily herself was largely unnecessary.

  It was late in the morning and Jack had long since departed to the City to various engagements before the House of Commons met. Watching him fight for his selection, then campaign, lose, and campaign again, she had gained a respect for him which added very greatly to her happiness. He was consolidating his position with skill.

  So why was she standing in the sun in the great withdrawing room in her lovely town house, dressed in lace and coffee-colored tussore, and feeling such a sense of frustration?

  Edward was in the schoolroom. Evie was upstairs in the nursery. Jack was in the City, no doubt fighting for reform of some law he believed outdated. Cook would be with the butler preparing luncheon; they would not need to serve dinner tonight. Emily and Jack were due to dine out. She had already asked her maid to prepare her clothes for the occasion. She had a new silk gown of dark forest green trimmed with ivory and pale gold flowers, which complemented her fair skin and hair. She would look beautiful.

  She had seen the housekeeper. The accounts were attended to. Her correspondence was up to date. There was nothing to say to the butler.

  She wondered what Charlotte was doing. Probably something domestic, cooking or sewing. Since Pitt’s promotion she could afford more help, but there was still much she was obliged to attend to herself.

  What about Pitt? His world was completely different. He would be investigating a crime, perhaps only theft or forgery, but possibly something much darker. His problems would be urgent, to do with passions, violence, greed. He would be using the skill and imagination he possessed, working until he was exhausted, seeking to unravel the tangle of events and find the truth, to understand the good and the evil, to bring some sort of justice to it, or at least a resolution.

  In the past she and Charlotte had helped him. In the pursuit of the Hyde Park Headsman they had contributed a great deal.

  She smiled without being aware of it. The sunlight streamed through the long windows onto a bowl of late delphiniums—the second blooming—catching their blue and purple spires. It had taken Jack a little while to forgive her for the risks she had run in that affair. She could hardly blame him. She could have been killed. She had known better than to offer any excuses, just apologies.

  If only something would arise in which she and Charlotte could help again. Lately she had hardly even seen Pitt. Since his promotion he seemed to have been involved in cases which concerned more impersonal crimes, crimes whose motives lay outside her world, such as the treason in the Foreign Office just a month or two ago.

  “What are we having for luncheon?” a querulous voice demanded from behind her. “You haven’t bothered to tell me. In fact, you don’t tell me anything! I might as well not be here.”

  Emily turned around to see the short, black figure of her grandmother standing just inside the doorway from the hall. The old lady had been obliged to move from her own home when Emily’s mother had remarried, and since Charlotte had not room for her, and Emily had abundant room and means, there had been no reasonable alternative. It was not an arrangement either of them cared for, Emily because the old lady was extraordinarily ill-tempered, and the old lady because she had determined that she would not, on principle. It was not her own choice.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know what is for luncheon,” Emily replied. “I left it to Cook to decide.”

  “Seems to me you don’t do anything around here,” the old lady snapped, coming forward into the room, leaning heavily on her cane, banging it down. It was a border-painted wooden floor, and she disapproved of it. Too ornate, she said. Plain wood was quite good enough.

  She was dressed entirely in black, a permanent reminder to everyone—in case they should forget—that she was a widow, and should be regarded and sympathized with as such.

  “Cook rules your kitchen, housekeeper runs your servants,” she said critically. “Butler runs your pantry and cellar. Ladies’ maid decides what you’ll wear. Tutor teaches your son, nursemaid looks after your daughter. All that done for you, and you still cannot find time to come and talk to me. You are thoroughly spoilt, Emily. Comes of marrying above your station first, and beneath it next. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.”

  “I’m sure you don’t,” Emily agreed. “You never did know much about it. You assumed one half and ignored the other.”

  The old lady was aghast. She drew herself to her full, but negligible, height.

  “What did you say?” Her voice was shrill with indignation.

  “If you wish to know what is for luncheon, Grandmama, ring down to the kitchen and ask. If you would care for something different, I expect they can accommodate you.”

  “Extravagance!” The old lady clicked her teeth disapprovingly. “Eat what’s put in front of you, in my day. It’s a sin to waste good food.” And with that parting shot she turned and stumped out of the room. Her heavy feet echoed on the polished parquet of the hallway. At least this way they had avoided discussing Caroline’s latest whereabouts, and the general selfishness of her having remarried and thrown everyone’s lives into consequent disarray. Nor had there been another diatribe about actors in general, or Jewish actors in particular, and how they were, if such a thing were possible, socially even more of a disaster than policemen. The only thing good about it, in the old lady’s vociferous opinion, was that at least at Caroline’s age there would be no children.

  No doubt at least one, if not all, of these subjects would arise over the luncheon table.

  Emily spent the afternoon writing letters, more for something to do than any necessity, and then went upstairs to spend a little time in the nursery with Evie, and then with Edward. She heard from him of his latest lessons and his elaborate plans to build a model castle like the one the Knights Templar had built in the Holy Land during the Crusades.

  Jack came home a little after five. He had been in the City all day, but there was still a spring in his step when he came into the withdrawing room, leaving the door swinging behind him.

  “Excellent day,” he said enthusiastically, bending to kiss her brow and touch her hair gently. “I think I might really have got old Fothergill on my side. I had luncheon with him today. I took him to that new restaurant in the Strand. More expensive than it was worth, but the decor is gorgeous, and he was suitably impressed.” He sat sideways on the arm of one of the chairs, letting his leg swing.

  “The thing is,” he went on, “he actually listened to me. I was explaining about the importance of non-fee-paying education for the whole population as an investment in the industrial base….”

  Jack had been fighting to obtain better education for the poor ever since his entry into Parliament. Emily had watched its future wax and wane.

  “I’m very pleased.” She was pleased, but she found it hard to invest her smile with as much delight as she should have. “Maybe he’ll make a difference.”


  She dressed for the evening with great care, as a matter of self-esteem, and at half past eight was seated at an enormous dinner table between a large military gentleman with very forthright opinions on India, and a merchant banker who firmly believed that women were totally uninterested in anything except fashion, gossip and the theater, so confined his conversation accordingly.

  Opposite her was a man of about thirty whose sole preoccupation was the breeding of fine bloodstock, but next to him was a most unusual-looking young woman whose nose was a trifle too long, her mouth a little wide and her expression one of such humor and vitality that Emily found herself staring at her often enough to catch her eye and let her know that they had exactly the same thoughts of exasperation and boredom at the same moment.

  Jack was nearer the head of the table, as a matter of political duty, wooing people of influence who might be of further assistance with the education bill. It was important to Emily also, but the only part she could play here was to be decorative and charming, and the idea of doing that indefinitely was wearing very thin.

  The dining room was sumptuously decorated in French blue and gold. The long windows were curtained in velvet, displayed in rich folds skirted out over the floor in the approved fashion, to show a wealth of fabric. The table glittered with silver and crystal. So many facets gleamed and glinted, it dazzled the eyes. One could barely see the faces of the people at the farther end for the reflected lights. Diamonds sparked fire around white throats and the luster of pearls shone softly.

  Silver on porcelain clicked discreetly beneath the buzz of conversation. Footmen refilled glasses. Course after course came and went: entrées, soup, fish, removes, pudding, dessert, fruits. And then finally the hostess rose and invited the ladies to retire and leave the gentlemen to their port and the more serious discussions of the evening. It was, of course, the purpose for which they had come.

  Obediently Emily rose and followed the ladies out in a rustle and swirl of gorgeous colored skirts. On the way she managed to fall in step with the young woman who had sat opposite her at the table.